Leykaul is easy to drive through without realising how unusual it is. It is little more than a scattering of houses among forests, streams and open countryside in the German-speaking part of eastern Belgium, immediately beside the German border. Together with neighbouring Küchelscheid it has only around a hundred inhabitants and there is no real village centre, church or public building. We stopped here on 30 August, only during the day, and left the motorhome at the large parking area beside the former Kalterherberg railway station. With our 23-foot motorhome we had no difficulty finding a place at the far end of the car park. It had rained, but the ground was still firm enough and was not particularly muddy. The parking was completely free, there were no services and during our visit it was quiet enough, with nobody bothering us. What initially looked like a rather ordinary rural parking area turned out to be in one of the most peculiar pieces of border geography we had encountered on the trip. The station is called Kalterherberg because it served the German village of that name, yet the station itself stands in Belgium. The reason is the Vennbahn, the railway built through the region in the late nineteenth century. The Monschau–Waimes section opened in 1885, and a station was built here after a local representative from Kalterherberg successfully campaigned for one. The first station building was a simple wooden structure, but traffic on the line soon grew considerably. In September 1889 two passenger trains collided between Monschau and Kalterherberg and five people were killed, one of several accidents during the railway’s working life. The railway later became much more important than anyone could have imagined when borders were redrawn after the First World War. Under the Treaty of Versailles, the former Prussian districts of Eupen and Malmedy passed to Belgium, and the Vennbahn railway line itself became Belgian territory. In several places the tracks ran through land that otherwise remained German, so the thin Belgian railway corridor effectively cut small pieces of Germany away from the rest of the country. Even today the old Vennbahn route creates five German exclaves, making this one of the strangest borders in Europe. Around Leykaul and Kalterherberg it is particularly confusing because a road, a house or a former railway building can be Belgian while somewhere only metres away is German. For decades this was not merely a curiosity on a map. Formal border crossings and customs controls existed here, and the most direct routes between neighbouring communities could be inconvenient despite strong family and social connections across the frontier. The controls finally disappeared with Schengen in 1995, and today it is possible to cross the border repeatedly without noticing it at all. Leykaul itself is older than the railway. Its name is connected with slate quarrying, which is documented in the area as far back as 1570–1571. The actual settlement developed later, particularly after a quarrying concession in 1764 brought the Goffart family of stone workers here from Fumay in the French Ardennes. Slate extraction continued, with interruptions, until the beginning of the twentieth century. The municipality has since uncovered part of the old quarry entrance near the former railway area, preserving another layer of local history that would otherwise be very easy to miss. The Vennbahn has now been given an entirely different life. Instead of trains carrying passengers and freight, its former trackbed forms one of Europe’s longest cycle routes built on a disused railway. The paved Vennbahn cycle path runs for about 125 kilometres through Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg, and the section beside the parking area at Leykaul heads straight into the countryside. That was the most obvious feature of the place during our stop: cyclists and walkers could simply join the old railway route directly from the car park. Part of the railway has even retained its rails. The Railbike des Hautes Fagnes begins at Leykaul and follows seven kilometres of the old Vennbahn towards Sourbrodt before returning, giving a total journey of fourteen kilometres. The railbikes can occasionally be heard rattling past the parking area, but this is a daytime activity and does not seem to spoil the generally quiet character of the place. Looking through the experiences of people who have stayed here over the years, the same description comes up repeatedly: quiet, flat, free and particularly useful for cycling or walking. Several people describe very peaceful nights, including stays with only one or two other motorhomes, and the gravel surface is generally considered useful in wet weather. Others specifically mention feeling safe despite the isolated setting. The main limitation is equally consistent: this is not an equipped motorhome area. There is no official water point, waste disposal or electricity at the parking itself, so it is much more suitable for a self-contained vehicle. Some visitors have been able to use toilets or obtain water from the nearby railbike business or café when it is open, but these should not be treated as permanent motorhome services. Mobile phone reception can also be weak, something that is rather fitting in a place where phones can easily switch between Belgian and German networks. In winter, snow can make much of the parking inaccessible, although visitors have still managed to use the front section. The parking is officially listed with only a handful of motorhome places, but its actual open layout meant that during our daytime visit there was no difficulty fitting our vehicle. Leykaul was therefore not memorable because it was a beautiful village full of sights. There is hardly a village in the conventional sense at all. What made it interesting was discovering how much history was hidden in such an unassuming place: centuries-old slate workings, a railway station named after a village in another country, a railway that helped create one of Europe’s most bizarre international borders, and an old transport route now filled with bicycles and railbikes instead of steam trains. We had originally stopped at what appeared to be nothing more than a free car park in the countryside. By the time we left, Leykaul had become one of those small places that explained a surprising amount about the history of the border region around Belgium and Germany.
